Experts Suggests Modernizing The Public Tender Model Is A National Need

Proposal for a Law (PL) that proposes changes in the performance and evaluation of public tenders is being processed by the Federal Senate. The program is a sister of the New Bidding and Contracts Law and has as one of its main objectives to make the Brazilian State better select its servants and reduce public spending.

Fernando Coelho, professor of Public Management at the School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EACH) at USP, believes that the project is necessary to guarantee the modernization of public administration and to ensure that civil servants have the necessary skills to assume certain positions.

Historic
It is interesting to note that the modernization of public administration is one of the pillars for structuring the new federal legislation, along with the improvement in the selection of public servants with the guarantee of legal certainty. The professor explains that PL 2258/2022 is a legislative process that has been discussed for at least 23 years. Initiated in 2000 in the Senate and in 2003 in the Chamber of Deputies, the regulation of public tenders is also present in the 1988 Federal Constitution .

Every time the plan is discussed, there is a debate about two types of bill: the first concerns the guarantee of legal security for candidates — since they take into account the chance of fraud and arbitrariness in public tenders, especially in small and medium-sized municipalities that often do not have conditions to carry out the organization of exams with higher quality.

On the other hand, there are proposals that aim to modernize public tenders as a recruitment tool, considering that most of the tests are multiple choice and, according to the specialist, are not capable of assessing all the candidates’ skills. Coelho explains that this discussion does not draw much attention, since “it is very much internal to government management itself and has few civil society actors interested, so these issues are being postponed”.

In addition, in the last ten years, Brazil has gone through an economic and financial crisis that has strongly reduced public tenders at the three levels of government, so this discussion has become “lukewarm”. With the return of the contests that are being announced by the state and federal spheres, the theme has returned to the fore with the PL that was unanimously approved by the Chamber of Deputies in 2022 and now goes to the Senate.

Model
The professor also explains that modernizing the public tender model is a necessity. “The model applied in Brazil is often anachronistic when compared to international models.”, he adds. In Brazil, 75% of the contests applied are single-phase, which manage to assess academic knowledge, but do not have phases to assess skills and competences.

“We call this the concurseira ideology, which led many human resources managers to be very conservative in the face of the risk of judicialization”, says Coelho. This happens because there are arguments that consider that tests that seek to assess skills and competences open a flank for subjectivity. The teacher explains that this is a mistake, since it is possible to test these attributes from different tests and attributes.

One of the problems associated with the application of this model in Brazil is the fact that tenders are not held frequently. Thus, when they arise, in addition to the risk of judicialization, the public manager usually does it in a hurry, since time and cost are taken into account in this process.

Coelho explains that this should not happen and that positions should be assigned strategically, since civil servants remain in that position for a long period of time. In Brazil, it is possible to observe some good examples of contests, but they are not the rule, but the exception. The professor cites, as examples, the tests that are made for the police forces, which have the application of the psychotechnical test, and the tests for Brazilian diplomacy, which are divided into several stages.

“The commission responsible, given the absence of an infraconstitutional law and looking at previous cases of litigation and judicialization, does not put itself at risk of innovation”, he adds. Therefore, assessing skills and competences is essential to rescue the vocation for public service. Finally, Coelho reflects that this is a minimalist bill, unlike several existing bills in the country, which provides for the need for workforce planning, therefore, assessing the skills and competencies of candidates is essential.